by Anna Birch
She didn’t call it unoriginal, or boring, or anything else.
It was “just, you know, fine,” and that should have told me everything.
The Frist Art Museum is grand in the kind of way that I feel a little too dirty to step inside. It looms over Broadway, granite and angular, as if one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s houses and a medieval fort had some kind of strange, glorious love child.
The front is lined with—what, Doric? Corinthian?—columns cast through an art deco lens, a pantheon dedicated to the only deities people like Rhodes, Sarah, Kiersten, and I worship: the patron gods of culture.
It seems like I’m the only person here that didn’t realize—really, truly, absorb—that the project proposal was an actual, bona fide, stand-in-front-of-a-podium presentation.
“Randall literally told us it was a presentation,” Sarah whispered to me as we were queueing up backstage. “He even said, ‘Plan for five-to-seven minutes—use the whole time, and bring a slide show—’”
“I know what he said!” I hiss.
She laughs at me.
She’s told me before she thinks I sound like a goose when I whisper through my teeth like that.
I’m not laughing.
I don’t think it’s funny.
I don’t have a presentation planned. I wasn’t planning on a speech at all—I know my strengths. I know that if I’d written out what I was going to say, it would sound clunky and robotic. I know that there’s a burning in me that fascinates people, and I know that I’m anointed by fire when I get going on something I care about.
I know I will never beat Rhodes at being poised, prepared, and rehearsed—but she’ll never match the way I glow.
Except I’m not standing in a small room full of old ladies—I’m waiting with the others backstage in a stranger-filled auditorium. This is how I pictured it would go: one of those coffee-and-paper-scented conference rooms people rent on the bottom floors of big libraries with outdated artwork on the walls. The Capstone Award judges would sit at a long table on the far wall like the judges on The Voice, each of us finalists entering one at a time to pitch our potential projects to three women who hold the fate of our worlds in their hands.
A feminine, disembodied voice—someone’s aunt or mother, probably—whispers my name from deeper within the cavernous backstage area. She butchers it, actually, so much so that she has to say it three times before I realize she’s speaking to me.
Based on the others who have gone before me, and the thunder of applause for the previous presenter—Marianna Walters, who is exiting stage left—I know that it means I have to go.
I’m not ready. I don’t know what I’m going to say anymore.
I wasn’t going to beat Rhodes at her own game here, and I’m not going to beat anyone by my own rules, either.
Worse still, I’m damp with sweat. Everywhere: My upper lip, the base of my skull under my curls, my armpits, under my breasts, at the small of my back, my ass crack, between my thighs. My pulse thunders away with such force, I can see it in the way my peripheral vision throbs in wild, frenetic unison with the beat of my heart.
This is how I die.
Except I don’t die—I end up out onstage somehow, but I don’t remember marching myself out. Except I know I had to have marched myself out there, because otherwise I would still be standing backstage with the others.
The lights are bright on my face, and I can’t see much farther than the table of judges along the front row. Whispers and shuffling echo up from the built-in theater seating, so I know in theory the room is at least moderately full of people—parents, probably, and the myriad people who style themselves as “patrons” who keep art festivals like the Ocoee Arts Festival going.
The heavy wooden podium is too tall for me, so I remove the microphone from its stand and step around it. The screen behind me is empty, because I don’t have a PowerPoint presentation.
All I can do is paint a picture with my words instead.
The room settles into silence.
I open my mouth, and I begin to speak.
CHAPTER 14
RHODES
Username: I-Kissed-Alice
Last online: 20m ago
I should have never agreed to meet Cheshire.
This is exactly what I was worried about: That I would be distracted by being nervous about her, and I wouldn’t put energy into my presentation—which, to be honest, still feels like pissing in the wind.
I have no idea if I’m going to pull this off. Not when I look down the long row of finalists and wonder whose face I’ve fantasized about kissing.
None of this feels like real life.
A stack of index cards sit in my lap unread, and even with my laptop opened to my PowerPoint presentation in front of me, my attention is transfixed on the stage with everyone else. The cards are professionally printed, and per my coach I’m not allowed to bring them onstage with me.
“It needs to look seamless,” he said, adjusting his tie. “Completely poised, like you’re just, you know, breathing it out of you.”
Onstage, Iliana is pulling off something exactly the opposite. Without the benefit of a slideshow, she’s weaving together a story: Feared by some, and disbelieved by most, artistry and tarot carry a long, storied history that most overlook.
“Seventy-eight cards means seventy-eight pieces of individual artwork,” Iliana says. “And within those seventy-eight cards are five complete story arcs, worlds inside of worlds, whose symbols relate to our own experiences as humans. The kinds of stories that were relevant five hundred years ago and are just as relevant now.”
Rather than stand behind the podium like the rest of us, she paces with the microphone in one hand. The other hand flies around her as she talks, painting pictures with her mind’s eye that none of us can see.
Her words fall out of her, hurried and jumbled, a willy-nilly stream of consciousness that doesn’t quite make sense, except that it does. There’s an unvarnished charm to it, almost as if she’s opened the front of her skull and allowed us to see the intricate inner workings of her brain.
It’s almost like a TED Talk.
It just works.
I thrust a cuticle between my teeth and swallow bile.
“Traditionally, tarot imagery is drawn or painted. But I, um, submit for your approval a series of seventy-eight paper-cut cards in red and black paper, layered between sheets of glass for depth.”
There is a long pause before Iliana speaks again.
Her tongue clicks against the roof of her mouth.
“Rather than prepare a slide presentation,” she says, “I’ve made my sketchbooks available to you. The pages with my preliminary sketches are, uh, dog-eared. Or, you know, um, folded down.”
Another long round of silence.
Shuffling paper echoes throughout the auditorium.
Pages with my preliminary sketches sounds like a handful at most, but it sounds like the judges are looking at her other work, too.
Iliana’s so jittery that her curls shake around her face, but no one can take their eyes off her. Something about her wild, frenetic energy is fascinating, in the same sort of way as watching a captured firefly try to fight its way out of a Mason jar.
There is no poise to her at all, and yet she could very well be the one to take this thing from me. The small audience thunders with applause, and Iliana strides offstage like an electric, malevolent goddess.
CHAPTER 15
ILIANA
Username: Curious-in-Cheshire
Last online: 20m ago
Rhodes, of course, is everything the Capstone Award committee has ever wanted.
She’s not sweaty and shaking and babbling about tarot cards.
The stage lights shine on her dark hair, and her sweater falls over her curves in a way that’s equal parts flattering and nonthreatening to a battery of crotchety old women. She moves like an automaton: Eye contact with the first judge, eye contact with the second judge, eye contact with the
third judge. Glance at the clock. Pan the crowd. Eye contact with the first judge, eye contact with the second judge, eye contact with the third judge. Glance at the clock. Pan the crowd.
Her presentation is canned, a regurgitation from that day in the diner a few weeks ago.
“Breathy nudes,” she says, clicking the remote in her hands to move the slides. “A series.”
Behind her, one of her trademark “breathy nudes” spreads across the screen, cream-toned pastels swept across paper toned deep claret. Each stroke of pastel is just a whisper, half smudged into the paper. And still, my brain completes each line the way it completes Sarah’s sentences: The nip of a waist leads to the curve of a hip. The swell of a breast, that delicate strait that runs from an earlobe down to the crest of a clavicle.
Every piece merely suggests the shape of the figure in question, leaving my imagination to fill in the rest.
They’re exquisite: Technically perfect. Clearly inspired. Intellectually stimulating. Tantalizing on a very basic, physiological level.
I wish I could find any fault in these at all.
She clicks the remote again.
“Lighter than air, soft pastels on colored paper. The study would emphasize each person’s innate vulnerability while focusing on their shared humanity despite their physiological differences.”
Her right eyebrow twitches, then the third finger on her left hand.
The judges nod thoughtfully.
“How is this different from last year’s Ocoee Art Festival submission?” asks one of the judges—a Mrs. June Baker, the woman who visited the school for the interest meeting earlier in the year. She gestures to the work on the screen behind Rhodes, the piece in question.
Rhodes took the Young Artist’s Achievement Award for this piece.
“It’s—It’s true that my work follows a theme,” Rhodes’s voice quivers, just on the end of each sentence, “but I—I believe an artist’s work goes where their interests are.”
“So, would you say this is a continuation of your Ocoee Art Festival series, then?”
“Yes.” Rhodes’s smile is broad. “Do you have any other questions?”
Sarah is down at the other end of the line, but Kiersten is positioned to my right. She’s watching Rhodes with the same interest as I am, and her face twists into something that reflects the sick dread that’s settled into my gut. Rhodes’s brilliant, beatific smile confirms something in my mind so clear, so apparently obvious, that I can’t believe I didn’t see it before this very moment:
“This feels like a setup,” I whisper to Kiersten. “They haven’t had questions for anyone else.”
“I heard y’all’s faculty advisor called in a favor,” Kiersten whispers. “Apparently, he told June Baker that Rhodes’s grades weren’t good enough, and June waived the GPA requirement so she could enter. Sounds like they’re trying to stack the deck.”
“How do you know that?” My voice echoes out into the audience, who have all gone quiet between presentations. The audience responds with a titter of soft laughter.
Ah, yes. Dramatic teenagers.
Hilarious.
“One of my friends was doing some filing in the office weeks ago. Y’all’s drawing guy doesn’t realize how loud he is.”
“Mr. Randall,” I speak over the thrumming pulse in my ears. “So, you actually heard him saying all this?”
I want to cry. I want to laugh.
I am furious.
“Not me, but yeah. He was talking to her mom about it, and she was really excited. It just seems, I don’t know—slimy.” She frowns. “I almost dropped out after he told me, but I really need this, so—”
Of course. There was no way she was getting into the Capstone without some kind of outside help—I’ve seen firsthand how little she’s actually turned in for class. I also have French and AP Euro with her, and I know she barely scrapes by in her core classes, too.
There’s no doubt that she’s gone from just-okay grades to literally, actually, failing.
“It was slimy for Randall to do it,” I say, “and slimy for Rhodes to follow through with it.”
Rhodes isn’t smiling when she steps off the stage. She only galvanizes when our eyes meet, her shoulders going ramrod straight and her jaw freezing into hard angles.
She pauses in front of me just long enough to look me over from the top of my head to the toes of my shoes before she makes her way past the others, in the direction of the stage foyer.
I follow her.
I don’t know what I’m going to say when I get where she’s going.
The door slams in my face.
Suddenly, everything I want to say strains against the inside of my mind, two years of it stretching and pressing and growing and screaming—
I fling the door open behind her.
When she whirls around, her eyes are wide, and her jaw is set.
I close the distance between us. She’s got at least six inches on me, and probably a good twenty pounds. She pushes me away from her to create space, and I push back. Harder this time, maybe too hard.
It’s an orgasm of its own kind: euphoria followed by an instant break of tension.
I started this fight, and it isn’t one I’m going to win fairly.
CHAPTER 16
RHODES
Username: I-Kissed-Alice
Last online: 20m ago
Iliana is a force of nature, practically flying through the door to claim any space between us.
Her voice is thunder, and her eyes are lightning.
Electricity surges in each curl that flies about her face; it crackles and glows over the top of her skin—
Her hands are on me, and her breath is on me, and her hair is on me—
I throw out my arms and push her back.
Disbelief hangs heavy around us.
After everything, this is the first time we’ve ever actually touched each other.
“I fought for my place at the Conservatory.” Iliana is first to break the silence. Her chest heaves. “I fought to be here.”
“Of course you think you’re the only one fighting,” I say.
Sarah, as ever, is alternately hovering between the two of us and trying to blend in with the wallpaper. Kiersten hovers close, hammering away at the phone in her hands as she watches. I throw a hand out in Sarah’s direction as proof.
“Sarah is fighting to be here,” I say. “I’m fighting to be here, too.”
“Sarah doesn’t matter right now!” Iliana is on fire. “This is about you.”
Sarah clutches her cheek as if she’s been slapped, but if Iliana notices she doesn’t care. She’s the sun, burning bright and brilliant. She’s too much to look at like this, a black hole caving in on itself and threatening to subsume me into nothingness.
It takes everything within me not to roll over and show her the soft underside of my belly.
“Your family has given you everything,” Iliana seethes. “They paid out the ass for you to start the Conservatory in the eighth grade. You know why you’ve done Ocoee every year and I haven’t? I can’t afford the two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar entry fee.”
“That’s not fair!” I cry. She isn’t fair. “I am so sorry I’ve had advantages in life that you didn’t have—”
“I know you’re only here because June Baker waived the GPA requirements for you.”
Heat flies to my face. “THAT’S NOT—”
“True?” She rests a hand on her hip. “So why do I know that Randall was the one who talked to her?”
“Iliana—”
No. No. No no no no no.
No one is supposed to know this.
Iliana steps closer. Her eyes are brimming over with tears, and her hands are shaking when she presses one finger into my chest. “I know your secret, Rhodes Ingram. The emperor isn’t wearing any clothes, and you’re failing at everything.”
It never hit me just how bad everything is until now, or the fact that over the past year I’ve lost more than
Iliana has ever had. She’s so new at this—so new at everything.
She’ll never understand what it feels like to have nothing left like this.
“You’re going to run out of steam one day, too,” I say. “You’re going to look around yourself and realize everything you’re doing makes you feel like you’re watching paint dry, and you won’t know what to do with yourself anymore.”
She isn’t a malevolent goddess, or a force of nature, or a dying star in a neighboring solar system. She’s completely, unerringly, 100 percent flesh-and-blood human.
She doesn’t say a word, so I continue.
“You have done an incredible job of fooling literally everyone into thinking that you’re some kind of prodigy,” I say, “because nobody believes in you more than you believe in yourself.”
“That’s not true,” she whispers. “I deserve to be here, just like anyone else.”
“You know it’s true,” I fire back. “No one else sees where this is going, but I do: You’re going to blow through all this energy you have, and you’re going to piss everyone off, and you’re going to end up nowhere. Alone. You don’t actually have the talent it takes to make it, and you know it.”
Iliana lunges forward, swiping and cursing.
Kiersten grabs her around the waist and pulls her back.
“Are you stupid?!” Kiersten’s louder than either Iliana or myself. “Everyone in the auditorium can hear you. If someone from the Capstone sees you, you’re both done! Like, done!”
Iliana’s irises are blown out and her stare is black, every part of her in twitching, frenetic recoil.
Another spike of adrenaline.
Meanwhile, something in me starts to spiral. My heart hammers in my ears, but the rest of me is going to stone, and if the world was moving slow enough to count the motes of dust in the air a minute ago, it’s fast-forwarding at triple-speed now.
Everything around us comes crashing back into focus—the hall outside the Frist Center for the Visual Arts auditorium, with its broad marble facades and art deco–inspired metalwork. Sarah’s wide eyes and liner-smeared cheeks.
